Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair plans to operate a full flight schedule to Israel this summer, when it expects travel to and from Tel Aviv to return to normal, an airline executive said this week.
Europe’s biggest budget airline, which has not flown to Israel for nearly a year, was previously expected to resume service to Israel this spring.
“We rely on EASA [European Union Aviation Safety Agency] guidance …, but our view is that we will be back,” Eddie Wilson, chief executive of Ryanair DAC, the largest of five subsidiary airlines operated by the Ryanair Group told Reuters. “We’ve got a full schedule I think for Tel Aviv …, so we will be back in there for the summer as I think most of the other airlines will be.”
Low-cost rival Hungarian-based Wizz Air restarted service from Ben-Gurion International Airport last month, and is expanding service to seven more destinations this week: Abu Dhabi, Budapest, Krakow, London, Milan, Rome and Warsaw.
Several foreign airlines have resumed flights to Israel since the November ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with the major European carriers including Air France, British Airways and the Lufthansa group expected to restart service next month. The three major US legacy carriers are still not flying to and from Israel as the war against Hamas in Gaza continues.
United and American Airlines have suspended flights to Israel indefinitely, while Delta is scheduled to resume flights to Tel Aviv in April. United and Delta sought to resume flights periodically over the last year, only to extend the suspension of service following flareups in the war, while American has stayed away entirely.
British Airways has announced plans to resume flights from London to Israel in April, but with a reduced service and smaller short-haul planes.
January and February are typically the slowest months for travel to Israel.
About one-third of the 80 airlines that flew to Ben Gurion before the outbreak of the war have since resumed service, an Israel Airport Authority spokeswoman told JNS this week.
Last month, the Knesset gave preliminary approval to an amendment to the law requiring airlines to compensate passengers for cancelled flights, easing the requirements during wartime. The preliminary vote, which the foreign airlines had lobbied for last year, did not lead them to rush back to Israel.
Israel closed its low-cost Terminal 1 at Ben-Gurion International Airport at the start of the war, which offers lower ground operating costs to the carriers, but is likely to reopen it with the budget airlines' resumption of service.
Meanwhile, the five most popular destinations for Israelis travelling abroad last year were Greece with more than 1.8 million passengers, the US with about 1.4 million passengers, Cyprus with about 1 million passengers, the United Arab Emirates with about 890,000 passengers, and France with about 850,000 passengers, according to the Israel Airport Authority 2024 annual report.
In a year when most foreign airlines suspended, El Al had a near-monopoly on flights out of Israel, flying about 6.5 million passengers, followed by Israel’s budget carriers Israir with about 1.4 million passengers, and Arkia with about 1 million passengers. Fly Dubai, which has flown throughout the war, and the Greece-based Blue Bird served about half a million passengers each.
